Thorns

TEN: A POUND OF FLESH

“He’s at the hospital,” Aoudad said. “They’ve begun to study him.” He plucked at the woman’s clothes. “Take them off, Elise.”

Elise Prolisse brushed the questing hand away. “Will Chalk really put him back in a human body?”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Then if Marco had returned alive, he might have been put back, too.”

Aoudad was noncommittal. “You’re dealing in too many ifs now. Marco’s dead. Open your robe, dear.”

“Wait. Can I visit Burris in the hospital?”

“I suppose. What do you want with him?”

“Just to talk. He was the last man to see my husband alive, remember? He can tell me how Marco died.”

“You would not want to know,” said Aoudad softly. “Marco died as they tried to make him into the kind of creature Burris now is. If you saw Burris, you would realize that Marco is better off dead.”

“All the same—”

“You would not want to know.”

“I asked to see him,” Elise said dreamily, “as soon as he returned. I wanted to talk to him about Marco. And the other, Malcondotto—he had a widow, too. But they would not let us near him. And afterward Burris disappeared. You could take me to him!”

“It’s for your own good that you keep away,” Aoudad told her. His hands crept up her body, lingering, seeking out the magnetic snaps and depolarizing them. The garment opened. The heavy breasts came into view, deathly white, tipped with circlets of deep red. He felt the inward stab of desire. She caught his hands as he reached for them.

“You will help me see Burris?” she asked.

“I—”

“You will help me see Burris.” Not a question this time.

“Yes. Yes.”

The hands blocking his path dropped away. Trembling, Aoudad peeled back the garments. She was a handsome woman, past her first youth, meaty, yet handsome. These Italians! White skin, dark hair. Sensualissima! Let her see Burris if she wished. Would Chalk object? Chalk had already indicated the kind of matchmaking he expected. Burris and the Kelvin girl. But perhaps Burris and the widow Prolisse first? Aoudad’s mind churned.

Elise looked up at him in adoration as his lean, tough body poised above her.

Her last garment surrendered. He stared at acres of whiteness, islands of black and red.

“Tomorrow you will arrange it,” she said.

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

He fell upon her nakedness. Around the fleshy part of her left thigh she wore a black velvet band. A mourning band for Marco Prolisse, done to death incomprehensibly by incomprehensible beings on an incomprehensible world. Pover’uomo! Her flesh blazed. She was incandescent. A tropical valley beckoned to him. Aoudad entered. Almost at once came a strangled cry of ecstasy.